June 30

Patch 5.5 is ready for Open Beta! Thank you for your ongoing support and participation as it is fundamental in ensuring that builds are stable and ready for Live release.

In this Open Beta we have implemented password protected lobbies, improved performance and addressed some additional community issues. We are looking forward to hearing from you and we will continue to monitor the forums for your feedback. Here is the new Open Beta discussion thread.

Below are the issues that have been addressed in this 5.5 Open Beta:

Stability and Performance Improvements:

Performance optimizations should increase frame rates up to 15%

Researching spies during treaty should no longer causes a desync

Community Focused Bug Fixes:

Hosts are able to set a password for their lobby

Audio for notifications should no longer overlap and cause a loud noise

Audio for garrisoning / un-garrisoning should no longer overlap

Lobby civ pools should now be consistent for each host player

Lobby civ pools should now display the conquerors civilizations correctly

Lobby maps should now display random special and real world at the top of the list

June 20

Patch 5.4 has now moved from Open Beta to Live! We are very excited to bring these changes to the full community and thank you to everyone who participated in the Open Beta. Your feedback and assistance has been essential to ensuring our desync rates have improved and we really appreciate your patience as we continue to work together. The new discussion thread can be found here and we look forward to hearing what you think and collecting your feedback!

Keep your eyes peeled for news of the 5.5 Open Beta, which we’ll announce soon!

The following items have been addressed in this 5.4 Live update:

Stability Fixes:

Loading into game should no longer desync if a player has not received the correct update to their World Time setting.

Gameplay should no longer desync if a player has missed the update to their World Time setting. If a player has missed the update we now provide additional time for the player to receive that update.

Encountering a DX9 memory crash should now bring up a popup and allow the player to proceed rather than crashing to the desktop.

Community Focused Bug Fixes:

Lock teams should function correctly for custom campaigns.

Allied positions are no longer unintentionally revealed for custom campaigns.

Population limit is now respected in scenarios.

AI colours should now appear correctly in custom scenarios.

Colour settings in multiplayer should now appear correctly in custom scenarios.

Berber Camels should now function correctly after loading into a saved game.

About This Game

In Age of Empires II: HD Edition, fans of the original game and new players alike will fall in love with the classic Age of Empires II experience. Explore all the original single player campaigns from both Age of Kings and The Conquerors expansion, choose from 18 civilizations spanning over a thousand years of history, and head online to challenge other Steam players in your quest for world domination throughout the ages. Originally developed by Ensemble Studios and re-imagined in high definition by Hidden Path Entertainment, Skybox Labs, and Forgotten Empires, Microsoft Studios is proud to bring Age of Empires II: HD Edition to Steam!